Michael Hibbard

All about the books I write, along with random thoughts, and babbling.

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The Scholarly Update I

I have been working feverishly on research and writing for my newest novel, The Ageless Scholar. It has been a personal adventure that I must say has been surprisingly exciting. I have found some very interesting books that have made the journey all the more exciting.

My story begins in 1867 and goes through the present day. It is amazing to me how much has happened in just a blip in the history of human history, and the last hundred years have been both wonderful and terrible. We are a very interesting group of creatures we are. We are capable of such amazing things, but we have also done some terrible things.

I am originally a Yankee who meandered his way to the south over the course of my life, and having lived in Virginia for almost 20 years, I think I have finally fused my life in the north and my life in the south to simply become an American. And though this book is by no means an autobiographical work, I find that the things I want to impart in this literary work, are the things I wish we could openly say to one another. We each live in a politicized, victimized, materialized, falsified state, where we are afraid of ourselves and afraid of one another. And the most profound thing I have learned, not only through my writing, but also through my own perpetual scholarly pursuits, is that we could have avoided much of the strife that now plagues our world. And I chose the word plague, because it will either be cured, or it will destroy us all.

Each of us wants to be heard, so the most apt description of our existence can be summed up in the existence of social media. We are all chirping birds, looking for others like us, but our calls are drowned out by those who squawk the most — or we are silenced because what we have said is not what people want to hear. We have forgotten how to be honest with one another. We make excuses for ourselves and for others. But how can we move forward as one world, one voice? Its becoming less and less possible, because there are more and more voices, creating one big cacophony of “Me, Me, Me”.

I do not expect to change the world with my writing, but I am trying to be heard. I may be wrong in the things I say, or the way I perceive the world, as we all perceive the world very differently. This is the nature of free will. It has always been my hope that we as a people — all races, creeds, religions and countries — could come to understand that there is more to life than the pursuit of material things. In the end, we all will die. And no matter how badly we try to extend our lives, we must accept that death is a part of life. However, I am a firm believer in reincarnation. Because we see cycles everywhere we look. And the only think you truly own — the only things you will take with you when you leave your current body — are the thoughts and experiences that molded you as a person. And it is not enough to simply hold on to these memories, we must use them to become better human being and a better world. We cannot evolve unless we recognize that the lines we draw around our countries, states and cities are imaginary — and it is these lines that keeps us from being one world unified and glorious.

This is the perspective of my novel, and the Ageless Scholar spends his existence trying to tell us all the things we’ve done poorly, over the decades he’s existed and hopes — like I do — that we will realize all these things before it is too late.